The one year mark is approaching for when I reached out to publishers about taking on my project titled Let There Be Rain. As mentioned in the previous blog, I changed the name later to Saving Forest Farm to highlight the home of the animals rather than the circumstance or desired outcome.
To get back on topic, I began reaching out to publishers in mid to late May. My final two publishers to make a decision on were Archway Publishing, which is a sub-unit under Simon and Schuster and is based out of Bloomington, Indiana, and Dorrance Publishing, which has almost a 100 year publishing track record and is based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
I was intrigued by both publishers especially in the age of self-publishing and this was their strong selling point. The deciding factor for me was that Archway Publishing was up front with their packaging prices and additionally provided discounts if the author had a membership with the Author Learning Center (ALC) powered by Author Solutions. The ALC is a great way to connect with other authors that have been successful in the publishing industry through writing, marketing, and networking. There are several opportunities to attend live webinars with successful authors and a large library of past webinars for members to watch later when they have the time. Aside from the ALC network, the discounts were helpful as I got up to 35% off of the package prices that fit what I needed. However, the ALC membership fee is $50 a year, but this is still worth the price because of the access to authors, discounts, and learning materials. For example, the illustrator's package for a children's story is $4,199 and included but not limited to the following items:
- ISBN Assignment
- U.S. Copyright Registration
- Worldwide Distribution
- Hard & Soft Cover Publishing
- e-Book Publishing
- 10 Free Softcover Copies
- 5 Free Hardcover Copies
- 6 Fine Detail Color Illustrations
- 100 Bookselling Promotional Materials
After applying the discount from the ALC membership, the final package cost was $3,434.20. That is a savings of $764.80, which helps a lot when you need to add more illustrations or promotional items or save for later concerning any marketing that you may want to try. I will dedicate another blog entry for marketing later. If you decided to back out of the package and wanted a refund, Archway Publishing would refund everything except $400, which is a reading and processing fee because there are several projects coming and going and if their staff has begun work on or have your project in their que then it costs time and money to have them involved in some capacity. Well, I explained why I chose Archway Publishing, so let me tell you why I did not choose Dorrance Publishing.
Dorrance Publishing did not advertise any packages nor would provide me with any rates. They wanted to see my project first and decide if they wanted to take on the project and then offer options. That was tempting because there were no charges for them to read my manuscript. The only part that I got a little hung up on was I could not see up front what kind of quality their children's books and illustrations were. If I was writing a basic short story or novel with no pictures, I would have not had a problem going further with Dorrance Publishing. There are some stories that I am planning to write or finish and will still consider Dorrance Publishing in the future. My selling point was to see past results and know the details of my book journey before the publishing process started.
June 1, 2018 - I signed the contract with Archway Publishing and began the illustration process. If you have read or seen Saving Forest Farm, you probably noticed that there are more than six illustrations from the package that I purchased. I added five more illustrations, a total of 11 illustrations, to help tell my story without getting too expensive. We live in a digital communication age, so my primary communication was through email with the Illustration Coordinator, who assigned an artist and team to draw, color, and shade the illustrations. My order of business for the illustrations was to complete a form that listed all the characters that I wanted in the story, and I had to provide every detail on the character such as eye color, hair, clothing, expressions. After I finished describing and detailing the characters, I had to write out each illustration scene how the grass looked, character placement and actions, background, water levels, and continuity between scenes. This is a short children's story; however, I wrote ab
out four times as much as on the character and scene descriptions. That is one of many disadvantages of not being the illustrator yourself. Unfortunately, I do not possess illustrating talents. So, I submitted the appropriate forms along with the manuscript to help the illustrators know how the story should flow.
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| Scene Placement Discrepancy: Glenda Goose, Cat, & Water Spout |
Please note that illustrations can take up to four to six weeks before a proof is sent back to you. If even after the proof is sent to you, there are some things still not perfect or may have been missed or neglected by the illustrators due to their large work load. I had to send two proofs back due to scene discrepancies with some characters appearing earlier than introduced in the story or in a different place other than what the story said. I had to pay very close attention to the smallest detail because after two proof reviews the illustrators would begin to charge for each correction. After identifying the scene placement discrepancies, I had to get the illustrators to make the grass less green and the water in the pound and trough less full. The illustrations looked great but it did not tell the story the correct way. Twelve weeks later, I was finally satisfied with the illustrations and all that was left was to add the illustration placements to the manuscript and send to the Publishing Coordinator for final review. I was very fortunate that this did not take as long because everything was in the correct order and thoroughly reviewed by me and the illustration team. The words and sentence structure did not need any additional edits; however, I would have loved to had less words on each page, but I did not have enough money to add three to four more illustrations and decided to proceed with the current layout. After the final review, which was mid-October, the book was published on November 7, 2018 and the rest is now history. This has been a very fun experience for me and hopefully I can have enough success to keep doing this with many other fun Forest Farm stories.
